Filander Hernandez Honduras Sulaco Yoro

A coffee tasting of berries, honey and raisin.

Filander’s life in coffee began at a very young age when he worked on his father's coffee farm. As he grew up, his responsibilities grew as well. What started as a game turned into an exhausting job, and the only relief was that he attended school in February each year. This led Filander to not want to become a coffee farmer when he finished his studies in 1996.

In 1998, while working for an NGO, his father asked him for a loan to help connect build a road between his father’s corn farm and a neighbor’s farm and eventually he helped negotiate the purchase of that land. He still isn’t what it was but something kept drawing him back to farming and he decided to ask his father if he could take ownership of the property.

There was no coffee plantation on the land. It was used for growing basic crops like corn and beans, and it was heavily deforested. After consulting with some experts to assess the feasibility of growing coffee, he didn't receive a clear indication of whether the land was suitable for this cultivation. There were no coffee farms in the area but he decided farming coffee was what he wanted to do. In the year 2000, he started his first nursery with three thousand coffee seedlings and other timber plants.

Now, twenty-three years later, as he looks at the farm and remembers the mockery from those who passed by and saw a farm being planted where there was none before, he feels proud of the quality of coffee and, above all, the perseverance that has led him and his family to create one of the most distinctive farms in the Yoro department of Honduras.

Filander hopes that buyers will come to visit "De lo Alto" Farm so that he can share many more stories about the challenges he has faced and the vision he continues to have for delivering coffee produced by his trees, knowing that perseverance and good planning are fundamental factors for achieving success.

Grind Guide

Fine - AeroPress, Stove top Espresso

Medium - Drip

Coarse - French Press, Pour Over, Percolator